1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device of verifying and reading color, usable in conjunction with methods of measuring liquids, especially combustible liquids, in order to verify possible alterations through the change in color, and a method of verifying and reading color in liquids.
2. State of the Art
The large amount of fuel that is daily adulterated is widely known and reaches about 13% on average, varying from 18% to 9% depending upon the region, for sales volumes about 93 million cubic meters in 1999 and 90 million cubic meters in 2000 in Brazil.
This problem is also found in various parts of the world as a function of the high aggregated value of combustible products, which makes them extremely attractive for commerce and also for alterations that impair the quality of the products. In this regard, there is a great difficulty at present in immediately proving adulterations, due to the delay in analysis and the large sales turnover of a reselling station.
According to data obtained at the ANP (National Petroleum Agency), there are on the Brazilian market: 243 Petroleum Distributors, 38,000 filling stations and 100,000 tanks. These data show the impossibility of controlling, through chemical analyses or the like, the quality of fuels from the moment of refining and distributing them until the act of buying the product by the consumer. However, this incapability of controlling the quality and pureness of fuels results in a stimulus for adulteration and the consequent illicit increase in sales.
There is a need for control also in the situations of constant recharges of liquid products. In this case, besides measuring the cubic volume contained in the tanks, it becomes necessary to verify the maintenance of the standard of the liquid to be supplied.
There are many ways of identifying the quality and pureness of the fuel, as for example, the physical-chemical analysis that makes a survey of the various components existing in the products and thus establishes criteria for accepting or rejecting the product in the tank. This process is usually employed in fuel distributing companies, so as to evaluate the maintenance of the standards of quality of their products at the reselling stations, and consists in collecting samples of fuel and mixture of this sample with reactants, so as to establish its composition.
However, in order to prevent frauds, that is, mixture of a fuel with other products after the physical-chemical analysis has been carried out, this analysis should be made in a continuous and uninterrupted way, also at the reselling stations, which is excessively expensive and unfeasible.
In many situations, a fuel reselling station commercializes a large amount of products daily, somewhat above 24 cubic meters (24,000 liters) of a determined type of fuel, for example, gasoline. For various reasons, the reseller intends to purchase 10 cubic meters (10,000 liters) of fuel from another distributing company, which is not the same as that of the reselling company. This product from a third party often does not have any invoice and, since this is not a reliable distributing company, this is often a product of very poor quality, having physico-chemical characteristics quite different from those of the products which this reselling station already has in its tank, and the tank containing the product of good quality already existing therein will receive that of unreliable quality, thus mixing the two products.
The volant unit of the company in charge of the inspection of products of the product-analysis program goes to the selling station at a determined time of day and makes the tests and the physico-chemical analysis, finding and attesting that the products stocked at that establishment are in accordance with the standards of quality determined by the company. At the time of inspection, the storing tank contains only 1 cubit meter (1,000 liters) of fuel from the company itself, which, due to the large volume of sales, will be sold out in a few hours. Once the inspection has been completed, the inspector of the company goes to another station to inspect the product, in order to fulfill his daily visits.
After the inspection and after the fuel of this tank has been sold out, the reselling station receives 10 cubit meters (10,000 liters) of the product from a different origin, which is added to the tank of the example, which is totally empty already, containing only its ballast of 250 liters. The reselling station continues with the regular sales of the adulterated product and, due to its large capacity of sales, in only 10 hours the tank is again empty and needs to be refilled. This time, however, the product is requested to the distributing company.
Thus, when inspection made on the next day the tank is already filled with the product from the distributing company itself and, therefore, the analyses will again indicate that the products sold by the reselling station of the example are totally regular. However, the reselling station would have sold 10,000 liters of adulterated fuel to a large number of consumers, who, without any possibility of reaction or protection, were cheated upon buying products with quality different from that for which they had looked and paid.
Besides the consumer, the distributing company too is seriously prejudiced, since, besides failing to gain regular profits by selling its products, it has expenses with the quality inspection program, which may be questioned, and this would impair its institutional image of a reliable and competent company.
Another important characteristic existing in the products at present is the controlled mixture of colored additives, in order to differentiate products, for instance, in the case of additive-containing gasoline and high octane solid gasoline. This coloring by means of additives also enables visual identification on the part of the consumer who is buying the product.
In this regard, we can observe that there is gasoline of red coloring, which is distinguished form alcohols having greenish color, and so on with other fuels.
Each fuel supplier tries to assign to it mark an exclusive coloring, so as to differentiate it from that of the competitors. This fact also may be proven by installing transparent tubes close to the filling nozzle of the filling station, thus enabling immediate identification by the consumer.
Obviously, there are details in which the consumer's perception cannot detect, such as suave graduations of color or even clarification of adulterated products, since it is not possible, at present, to provide the consumer with standardization, because the slight differences in the coloring of the fuel are imperceptible to the human eye.